


Yozakura - 夜桜

by Aurumite



Series: Tumblr Prompts [26]
Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: If | Fire Emblem: Fates
Genre: Angst, Cultural Differences, Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Pillow Talk, Pre-Romance, Sibling Bonding, Suicidal Ideation, Tags to be added as I go, dad trouble
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-17
Updated: 2017-10-12
Packaged: 2018-08-31 03:03:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 4,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8561095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aurumite/pseuds/Aurumite
Summary: Fates drabbles/ficlets requested on my tumblr.Chapter 9:“Do you still have those old thoughts?” Hinoka asks. She can still hear the rawness, the ring of Takumi's shout:    You’d be better off without me! I know everyone feels that way!





	1. Name: Niles/Leo

**Author's Note:**

> It's a doozy to title ficlet collections, goodness gracious. I was trying to think of less-obvious dualities for Nohr and Hoshido than dark/light and roses/cherry blossoms but they just made me think of yozakura (夜桜) -- cherry blossoms viewed at night. (Actually, it was explained to me as "cherry blossoms under the moonlight", referring to the beautiful silvery white the petals take on in such light, but idk if that's just a colloquialism. Anyway, I liked it more than anything else I came up with.) 
> 
> So this one wasn't requested; I wrote it as a pick-me-up for emmy. Nice things, for once!

“Do you ever think about changing your name?”

Niles almost doesn’t hear the question. His head is heavy on his pillow and his fingers are deep in Leo’s hair, thumb rubbing against strands soft and fine as the silk sheet over them. He’s been Leo’s retainer for years now, but he isn’t sure he’ll ever get used to the extravagance. His eye is closed but he can sense his master looking at him. He flutters it open.

“Mm?”

“Your name. The gang you were with gave it to you, did they not? And you were nameless before that?”

“That’s so.”

Niles doesn’t see why it matters. He’s too busy relishing the look on Leo’s face: sleepy and soft rather than tight-jawed. His dark eyes are merely curious now, not piercing.

“They abandoned you,” Leo says, and Niles feels his own jaw tighten. “I should think you’d want to shuck off everything they gave you.”

He should. But Leo had asked for it the night he was caught and Niles whispered it into his palm, chin in the harsh vice of the prince’s long, cold fingers. After that it was no longer his to cast away, and Leo had used it time and again: barking orders, impassively summoning, sternly reprimanding, gently when they were alone. Sometimes amused. Sometimes impressed. And Niles thought he loved those voices best until he heard it moaned high in the dark, and that one won by a landslide.

“I’ve come to like it,” he tells Leo with a shrug.

“Are you sure? I can easily call you something else.”

“I’ll respond to ‘Slave’ if it excites milord.”

“Niles,” he says exasperatedly.

“Too lewd? I could grow fond of 'Bedwarmer,’ too. That’s almost romantic. Imagine introducing me to people.”

“ _Niles_.”

He grins but pauses to think. It is a little tempting, the idea of leaving the last of his old life to rot behind him. Leo would give him something new, might even carve it into his skin or bind it to him with a spell, and the very thought makes him shiver with fear and wanting.

But in the end, Leo is his lord and saviour, and each word that leaves his lips is sacred. Should be honoured. Should be repeated.

“Niles is just fine.”

“If you say so, then.”

“ _You_ say so.”

Leo smirks. It’s such an arrogant, loathsome thing, but Niles kisses it anyway because it’s so good, the softness of his prince’s mouth and the warmth of him and the noise in his throat when he swipes his tongue inside. It’s too good for him and he steals it anyway. It’s what he does best.

“Goodnight,” Leo murmurs when he pulls away, and shuts his eyes. As always, Niles watches over him until he’s soundly asleep before allowing himself to follow.


	2. Resemblance: Xander

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 2: The first and last time Xander is told he resembles his father.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter summary was the request.

Another battle won, another mission accomplished. More questionably guilty blood in the creases of his gauntlets. He’d had no time to clean. He must report to Father, first. 

“Magnificently done, Your Highness,” Iago says, all smiles, as he ushers Xander into the throne room. “You look so like your lord father when you fight.” 

His stomach sloshes with his steps. He’s seen Father fighting before: purely spars, but there was exultation in his eyes, the breathless pride of a predator, a smile of triumph at every kill-strike. 

“Truly?” he asks. 

“Oh, truly."

His eyes lower to the floor as he approaches the throne. He’d thought himself above those childhood fantasies. He knows now that there is no true glory in battle – in the hearts of others, surely, but in his own, there is only terror and muscle-memory and the stench of open wounds.

He wonders if Mother would be proud or ashamed, Mother with her golden hair tickling his face, curtaining off his laughter as she kissed and named each bit of him she loved: his high forehead, his eyelids, his sharp cheekbones.

“Every inch your father’s son,” she’d say when she’d finished, delighted. 

He tries not to let the memory show when Father lets him rise and he must meet his gaze. He keeps his face as smooth as he can, inanimate as stone. As he searches Father’s features for some twitch of pride or approval, he sees that in this, too, they are alike.


	3. A Song: Ryouma/Scarlet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 3: Ryouma, Scarlet, and their bilingual child.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For tokyotheglave! The request was "Scarlet sings to little Shiro in her native language while Ryoma looks on adoringly."

The Nohrian language is ugly. 

Ryouma has always thought so. It’s harsh, full of words chopped off by consonants as if executed, slurring vowels, intonation an uneven pounding like the half-rhythm of drums of war echoing off the chasm. 

It’s Scarlet’s dialect, he tried to tell himself at first, that he finds more tolerable, not the fact that it’s Scarlet speaking. It blends less like a drunkard’s and more like ink in water, and the emphasis of each word reminds him more of cheeping birds than war cries. But after a point he can’t keep lying to himself. 

Shiro has always loved his mother’s voice. He speaks Hoshido’s language better than hers, still, but the timbre of his own voice carries a bit of her rasp, and more than enough of her brashness. 

He has her freckles, too. Ryouma watches the sunlight play across his face through the waving shadow of the branches above them. Shiro tugs on Scarlet’s breeches and demands, “Again, again!” 

And Scarlet sings for him. She’s always been a little pitchy but she sounds like metal jewellery worn against the skin: warm to the touch, like the golden ring she insists he wears. He watches her full lips, the way her eyes crinkle at the corner when she smiles, the way she reaches for Shiro as he parrots the foreign words. They sound nice in his son’s mouth, too. 

The singing stops. Only the sound of the wind is left, and the dappled sun and shadow on his eyelids. Reluctantly, Ryouma opens them, and then rises on stiff legs. A foolish waste of time. Daydreaming will not bring her back.


	4. Pride: Xander/Ryouma

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wartime. Mikoto's birthday.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The request was Xander/Ryoma, slowly getting to know each other.

When Xander sits at the low table in Ryoma’s tent to discuss a sudden change in tactics, there are new lines in Ryoma’s forehead and a porcelain decanter before him. Wordlessly, he pushes it to Xander. 

“No, thank you,” he says. “It is best for me to avoid tea and coffee after sundown.” 

“It isn’t tea.” 

Xander quirks an eyebrow but pulls the vessel over and sniffs the lip. It’s rice wine, and from the sting of it, not high in quality. 

“My apologies,” he says. “I generally do not partake.” 

“Nor do I,” Ryoma answers. 

Xander watches him. It only takes a moment: a lifetime at the Nohrian court is more than enough to show him the exhaustion in Ryoma’s broad shoulders, the dying light of a losing battle in his eyes. Something plagues him. With deliberate slowness, seeing there are no cups on the table (broken on the march, perhaps), Xander takes a drink of the wine and sets it back down. 

“What is the occasion, Ryoma?” 

The name without a title still feels odd in his mouth, even though their friendship had fallen into place quite naturally, and then grown just as naturally into little touches at the small of the back, lingering glances, warmth deep in the chest. He’s unsure whether it is a cause for alarm; he has not had enough friends to know. 

Ryoma has always seemed more at ease calling him simply _Xander_ , speaking to him frankly. It’s either that or the rice wine that makes him confide with his eyes lowered, 

“Today was Mikoto’s birthday.” 

An awkward pause. 

“I am sorry,” Xander says when he can. He knows it means nothing. She was killed in a Nohrian scheme with a Nohrian weapon, and he bears the blood of the man who planned it. Not so long ago, he would have cut her white throat himself on Siegfried’s edge if he'd had the chance. Even then he’d been too ashamed to put a name to the dark feeling that hooked its thorns into him at the mention of her name, she who would wall off her kingdom of plenty and watch the savage Nohrians starve to death across the chasm, her and Sumeragi’s eldest son, the spoilt, privileged, ignorant bastard. He’d seen the darkness mirrored in that bastard’s eyes on the field of battle: passionate, murderous hate. 

Ryoma doesn’t look at him that way now. There is not even a speck of resentment, though Xander braces himself for it. He only keeps his eyes on the table and confesses, 

“I loved Mikoto. I was happy to call her _Mother_. And after my father was–” He stops. Waits. Rephrases. “After Father passed, I swore to myself to keep her safe and happy, as he would want. As a good son should.” His eyes flick up finally, warm brown and fluid with emotion, and Xander purses his lips at the proof that Ryoma is just a little drunk. He remembers love for a mother, but his hadn’t lived long enough for his shift into adulthood, the metamorphosis from protected to protector. 

“I did everything I could, that day,” Ryoma says. “I ran my fastest and swung my hardest. I did not hesitate. But I failed her and she is dead. Sometimes, after I meditate and my mind is clearest, it seems to me that it is not my fault – that fate took its course and it is foolish of me to dwell upon it. But the guilt always returns. No matter what I do, no matter how I reason, I fear that somewhere I made a grave error, and I not only lost my mother, but shamed my father’s memory. I wanted to live in a way that made him proud. I will never have that, now.”

Xander grimaces and takes a much longer drink of the wine. It’s stronger than what he’s used to. 

“What do you want me to say?” he asks when he can. The question is sincere: he’s drilled himself in social niceties since he was a child and still can’t navigate the right thing to say, to do, to give, to keep to himself. 

“Nothing,” Ryoma answers. “I simply wanted to tell someone who would understand, and who would not offer ignorant condolences or obligatory praise to cheer me.” 

“Of late,” Xander says as he pushes the wine back toward Ryoma, “I would like to think that one’s father’s pride is not the highest honour he can earn.”

“Oh?” 

Xander knows this is unlike him but it’s too late and he’s too tired to get into all the details. “Do you have pride in yourself, Ryoma?” 

The prince across the table looks into the decanter. “Of course not.” 

“And why not?” 

“The day I feel pride in my accomplishments is the day that I become complacent. As a leader, I must strive to always outdo myself, and become the best man that I can be.” 

“Better than your past self.” 

“Of course.” 

“Better than Hoshido’s previous rulers.”

“Yes.” 

“Better than your father.” 

Ryoma looks at him again, hesitant, but Xander is unflinching as their gazes hold. 

“Someday,” Xander says quietly, “when I am very old, I want to feel proud. I think it will matter more to me than what my father thinks of me now. I try not to lose sleep over it.” 

After a long pause, Ryoma cracks a smile. “When I am very old, I want to feel proud of you too, Xander.” 

The conversation has been deflected to his own issues, but Xander lets it happen. Ryoma has clearly shown enough of his cracks for one night. They ease their chatter to more banal things, and drink deeply, and once Ryoma puts his head down on the table, Xander touches a lock of his long hair, twirls it gently around his finger before they both agree to part for the night. 


	5. Fine: Xander + Camilla

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Xander and Camilla after Corrin chooses his birth family.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For a prompt request for Xander and Camilla bonding.
> 
> (Also: I adore that fandom seemed to simultaneously decide that the covered part of Camilla's face is scarred. I'm here for it.)

Camilla hadn’t left her rooms in three days. Xander intercepted the servant on his way to deliver the evening meal and shook his head at the scent wafting from the covered tray. 

“Steak,” he ordered. “Rare.” And when the servant turned back for the kitchens, he opened the door without knocking. 

Camilla sat in her window seat, watching the rain slide down the windowpane. Her long hair was in a messy braid she’d clearly slept on more than once, and was greasy at the roots. 

“Leave me,” she commanded without turning. 

Xander ignored her to remove his gloves and put them as neatly as he could in his trouser pockets. 

“Leave me at once or I shall have you flogged.” 

“Tempting,” he said wryly. Gods only knew he’d had days of such self-shame that punishment and blood would have been a mercy, but only Camilla was privy to that. She turned at once, mouth falling open. 

“Xander? Darling, I didn’t mean it. You don’t deserve any such thing.” 

“Nor do your servants. They are only trying to feed you.” 

Camilla looked out the window again. Xander sat beside her but didn’t demand she meet his eyes. Her face was unpainted and blotchy. 

“Leo and Elise are very worried,” he said. 

“The dears. I’m just fine.” 

“This is not _just fine_.” Xander grazed a knuckle under her good eye and then tucked her fringe behind her ear, revealing her blind one and the scarring that dappled her face. _That_ was Camilla’s _fine_ : her greatest wound from the concubine wars, the proof that she was a survivor, a warrior who could claw her way out of any hell. The first princess of Nohr did not hide in her rooms and mourn where life fled to; she seized the reins. 

“I just don’t understand,” she finally admitted. “Why wouldn’t Corrin come back home with us?” 

“He hesitated before he chose.” Xander had been fighting his own questions about it, but that much brought him comfort. “Perhaps they’d done something to him, while he was there – manipulation, brainwashing. I can’t be sure. But we’ll retrieve him soon, and everything will be all right.”

“I want to believe that.” 

He could tell from her white knuckles that she also wanted to drive her axe down and split the red shell of Ryouma’s helmet in two, but he rested a hand over hers to stop the thought. 

“Believe it,” he said firmly. “He’s my little brother, too. Do you think I would spare any effort to locate him? Would I come to pry you from your rooms if I thought you had any reason to mourn? I would never lie to you, Camilla.” 

She nodded, took a deep breath, and shook her fringe back over her damaged eye. A timid knock came at the door and then the servant edged in with a new tray. The smell of fresh-seared steak filled the room. Camilla looked up at him and Xander just smiled back. 

“Come now: eat up, and then join Leo and me for coffee?” 

“I will,” Camilla said. Xander stood and had his hand on the doorknob before he heard her call her thanks, and thought of her scars as he shrugged the gratitude off and slipped out. 

No one would hurt her again. He’d make damned sure of that.


	6. Prepared: Sakura + Ryouma + Saizou

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ryouma and Saizou teach Sakura self-defense.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt was the chapter summary. Don't tell me Saizou and Ryouma aren't married and Sakura doesn't have two Biggest Brothers.

Sakura is too young to remember her father. 

“This duty falls to me,” Ryouma tells her when she meets him in the courtyard at dawn. They’re both in hakama but Saizou stands just behind her brother in full armour, as always. Kagerou is absent. Ryouma always brings Saizou when he goes with just one retainer, and Sakura is starting to suspect why, but holds her tongue. Now is not the time. (Never is the time.)

“Is this truly necessary?” she asks as he shows her a stance and corrects her balance. “Mother built the magic wall, so the Nohrians can never get in.” 

“Better to be prepared,” Saizou says, and Ryouma’s eyes harden, but he smiles gently for her. 

“He’s right. And you’re no little bird in a magic cage, are you, Sister? If you want to go out into the world someday, shouldn’t you be able to do so fearlessly?” 

Sakura sees the reason in that. At the very least, she doesn’t want Ryouma – or Saizou – worrying about her when they go off to battle. 

So she settles her weight. Saizou is instructed to attack her head-on so she can practice the simplest block, but he stays his hand so many times in a row that Ryouma waves him away. 

“It’s so rare you disobey a command,” he says over his shoulder, and doesn’t look while Saizou kneels and presses his forehead to the gravel. 

“Please don’t be angry at him,” Sakura whispers. “Don’t you see he just can’t bear the thought of striking me?” 

“I do see,” says Ryouma, and though his smile is gone, his voice is warm and fond. She spends the morning fending off her brother instead – though even he, she suspects as they all adjourn for breakfast, was not as harsh a teacher as he should have been.


	7. Practice: Leo/Sakura

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leo, Sakura, and her koto.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For a prompt requesting Leo/Sakura sharing culture.

“What’s that?” 

Sakura jumps, her practice interrupted. Of course, it had been her own fault for having her koto carried to the wooden porch so she could play in the nice weather. She’d just expected that Prince Leo of Nohr would be in a serious meeting or a tense negotiation or some sparring match with one of her brothers; anything that suited his personality better than walking the palace grounds like he, too, enjoyed being idle on summer days. 

It’s been two years since Ryouma and King Xander signed the peace treaty, but the first time one of the Nohrian royals has come to Hoshido personally. (She was glad to see which one, when he’d stepped from the carriage: not as frightening as Xander, not as loud as Elise; subtle and always ready with a kind word for her, last she saw him.) 

Leo has grown taller. The white sunlight flashes golden against the hint of stubble on his jaw. Completely unprepared for company, Sakura fumbles to answer as he comes up the stone pathway toward her.

“It’s a koto,” she finally manages. “A very traditional instrument. I’ve been playing since I was a child.”

“May I?” 

She nods out of knee-jerk reflex and he sits beside her, narrowing his eyes at the strings. Here and there he plucks one with long fingers and then scrunches his face, dissatisfied. 

“Your technique is good,” she stammers, watching his hands.

“Cello,” he says, as if that explains everything, and then he picks out a scale and makes a noise of triumph. 

“That was so fast!” Awed, Sakura claps her hands together once before she stops, remembering what a childish habit that is. “You’re so clever, Prince Leo,” 

It’s such a stupid, simpering thing to say, but she thinks it’s important to pay compliments she truly feels in her heart. He must feel her sincerity, because the smile he gives her is softer than usual. 

“It makes a lovely sound,” he says. “If it’s not an imposition…would you teach me a little, while I’m here on business? I promise I am a diligent student.” 

It’s no imposition. But of course, Prince Leo. Though my skills are still lacking, I will try my best. She shakes her head and takes a deep breath. Come on, Sakura. 

“It would be my pleasure,” she answers, and this time they both smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cello and koto plucking techniques are actually quite different but I can't play string instruments to save my life so. close enough as far as i'm concerned :P.


	8. Sparring: Hana/Hinata

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Eight: Hana's hair becomes a problem in her spars with Hinata.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The request is this chapter's summary, as per their supports.

“How about this,” Hinata says, lowering his sword. “I’ll braid it for you.” 

Hana has tried everything she could think of to keep her hair out of her face, but it’s too thick and heavy and unruly. Something always comes undone during her spars with Hinata, embarrassing her and once even getting an entire lock cut off. 

“You know how to braid?” she asks, shocked, as she unsnarls the ribbon from her hair. 

“Of course. Who do you think does Lord Takumi’s hair?” 

“Oboro.” 

“Who do you think does Oboro’s hair?” 

“… _Oboro?_ ” 

Hinata gives a stupid, immature, exaggerated sigh and takes the ribbon from her hand. Hana tenses as he moves behind her and starts to detangle sections with his fingers. It hurts but it’s obvious that he’s trying to be gentle. Her eyes close. 

“So what type of braid do you want?” Hinata asks, and they fly back open.

“You know more than one?” 

“Of course! There’s the normal one, the fancy one that starts from the hairline, the inverted one, the one that looks like fish bones…” 

“The fancy one,” Hana chooses – because it seems the most secure, and  _not_ because she’s enjoying Hinata’s fingertips against her scalp. She jabs, 

“This is pretty  _womanly_  of you, don’t you think?” 

He pauses, and then she feels the breath of his laughter on the top of her head. 

“I guess so,” he says, and Hana grins, because between that admission and his offer to touch her hair, no matter the outcome of that day’s spar, she’s already won.

(But she wins their spar too, of course.)


	9. These Days: Hinoka & Takumi

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 9:   
> “Do you still have those old thoughts?” Hinoka asks. She can still hear the rawness, the ring of Takumi's shout: 
> 
> _You’d be better off without me! I know everyone feels that way!_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For a prompt requesting Hinoka and Takumi bonding post-A support. 
> 
> Warning for suicidal ideation.

Hinoka finds him at the top of Castle Shirasagi, looking far out over the kingdom as the sun sets. His hair is loose now that he treats more than he trains. It's never been thick like hers and Ryouma’s but rather silky like Sakura’s, light enough that the wind tugs on all its layered ends: at his temples, his chin, his shoulders, his waist. He’s as sharply-dressed as always in a kimono of deep blue that brings out the warmth of his eyes, threaded through with a darker blue for texture and elegance, offset by a grey obi embroidered with real silver thread. 

It’s been so long and he’s grown so tall. Even taller than her. He was still shorter when she’d found him that one battle in the forest, pant leg drenched in blood, snarling at her to quit pretending like she cared and leave him to save himself – or die, whichever he deserved. 

“Hey,” she says softly. 

“Hey,” says Takumi. 

He turns and smiles a little to show she’s welcome, so she crosses the tower and leans on the carved wooden railing beside him. 

“You look good,” she tells him. 

“Oh, that’s all Oboro.” 

“No, I mean…”

She’s always been better with actions than with words, but there are no actions for something so subtle. 

“Next to Ryouma," she finishes. "When he leans toward you for advice; the look on your face. When you’re running to your next meeting and carrying so many scrolls. You look good.” 

She’s shocked him, she can see. Too blunt. But there’s gratitude in his eyes too when they shift away. 

“I feel useful, these days,” he says softly. He’s not looking at the sunset now but directly below them, to the stone courtyard, the flowers lining it like small stars, the servants milling like ants. It could be as far away as the sky, seven stories high as they were. He could tumble over the railing with no effort, simply giving in to the siren song of his own weight.

Hinoka puts a hand on his arm at once, heart thumping. 

“Do you still have those old thoughts?” she asks. She can still hear the rawness, the ring of his shout: 

_You’d be better off without me! I know everyone feels that way!_

“Every day,” Takumi answers. He doesn’t sound sad or even self-pitying. He’s simply stating a fact. Her grip on him tightens. 

“You were wrong, you know. I guess that’s always been your job as the littlest brother, to be wrong.” 

He glares and shrugs her off but Hinoka has a heart that can't be swayed. 

“I'm glad you feel useful, but it never _mattered_ how useful you are. I know Mother never liked it when we fought, but I’m going to fight you on this every chance I get, Takumi. Every day.” 

“Don’t be stupid,” he mutters, but he’s never been good at hiding his feelings, just as she never has been, and a smile slips out too. She puts her arm around his shoulders. 

“Let’s go inside, hm? It’ll get cold, soon.” 

He returns the gesture, pulling her tight against his side, and they step out of the wind together.


End file.
